Rating landfills in terms of sustainable development – design of a pilot study

Thus, understanding the potential of landfills to support or hinder SD is crucial when approaching sustainable waste management. In this paper we present, on the one hand, the basic ideas of the sustainability potential analysis (SPA) and its adaptation for a pragmatic legislative landfill assessment as a means to comprehensively analyze the potential of landfills to hinder or support SD. For doing so, SPA utilizes six generic criteria, which refer to evolutionary, developmental and cybernetic system theories and are derived in considering the systemic dimensions of function, structure and context. On the other hand, we outline the design and organization of a pilot study, which aims to implement a nationwide landfill rating in Switzerland on the basis of SPA. This pilot study is organized in four phases, including two field studies in which more than 20 landfills are assessed and several analytical steps in which experts from different stakeholder groups participate. Preliminary insights of the ongoing pilot study give evidence that the applied rating approach as such is generally feasible, and that the intensive participation of different stakeholders in the process has already lead to a broad interest in and acceptance of the approach. The latter acceptance is a crucial prerequisite for the successful implementation of the rating.